Lifetime health insurance for part-time council members survives another attempt to end it

A renewed bid to eliminate heavily subsidized lifetime health insurance for future Metro Council members was slowed down by current council members Tuesday.

Introduced as an amendment to a larger bill dealing with Metro employee and retiree benefits, the proposal would let current members qualify for lifetime health care after serving eight years, or two full terms. Under that plan, council members pay just 25 percent of insurance premiums – the same as retirees who worked for the government full-time – with taxpayers picking up the rest of the tab. Former council members on the plan also would be grandfathered in.

But anyone elected in 2015 or later would have to serve at least 10 years to qualify. They also would have to pay the same rate that city retirees hired starting Jan. 1, 2013, and working for at least 10 years would pay under the larger benefits legislation: 75 percent of insurance premiums.

Existing term limits restrict a council member to two consecutive four-year terms in a district seat or an at-large seat, though he or she can move from one type of seat to another without sitting out a term.

“So basically it makes the council equal with all other Metro employees,” Councilman Phil Claiborne said. “We’re no important … we’re no more deserving than they are.”

Jon Cooper, the council’s attorney, corrected Claiborne.

“Retirees – going forward,” Cooper said.

The “going forward” part annoyed Councilman Jerry Maynard, who said he and his colleagues shouldn’t get a better deal than those who will follow them on the council.

“If this is such a good amendment, it should apply to all of us in this room,” Maynard said. “I believe it’s immoral for me to take advantage of this benefit and then vote to say that people who follow me cannot have this benefit.”

Maynard and Councilman Ronnie Steine said the amendment was too complex to vote on immediately, though a previous version had been vetted by the council’s Personnel Committee earlier this month.

“I might well be for it if we had an opportunity to talk and think through it,” Steine said.

Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said the larger bill reflected the work of Metro’s study and formulating committee, which looked at full-time employees’ and retirees’ benefits and didn’t consider council health care.

“We need this bill passed for the betterment of the government,” Riebeling said. “The longer we delay these changes, it’s going to have implications.”

Claiborne ultimately agreed to withdraw the amendment and bring it back at a later date as separate legislation. Councilman Carter Todd introduced a bill to end the lifetime health care benefit earlier this year, but it stalled.

Todd and other critics have said the benefit is unfair to taxpayers and average Metro employees and costs the city hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Defenders of the plan say it helps make up for the low pay council members receive for part-time work that often feels like a full-time job.